Chapter 15: Project Bamf
"It's like blinking your eyes, you can see the back of your eyelids but it's so quick that you don't know what they look like."
It was a strange noise that woke Wolfgang. He sat up and looked around. It was very dark out, probably 2 or 3 in the morning. Then he heard it again, a sort of muffled thump. He got out of bed and pulled on a pair of pants. He grabbed a t-shirt and a flashlight and headed out the door.
Wolfgang's trailer was the only one that was near the tents since it served as their office. He could see a dim light shining through the open tent door and heard two more thumps. Someone was in the big tent banging things. Pulling on his t-shirt as he walked, Wolfgang prepared for the worst.
He peeked slowly around the corner of the tent flaps. In the middle of the floor that had been laid down to provide a smooth flat surface for the performers, was a single gas lantern. It cast crazy shadows everywhere, leaving most of the tent in total darkness. There were two more thumps in the blackness only now that he was close to the tent they didn't sound like thumps at all, more like someone slamming a door. But there were no doors in the tent. Plus, each time it happened it was in a different part of the tent. How many people were in there? What was going on?
Wolfgang shined his flashlight into the tent and stepped in. "You're trespassing!" He shouted, "If you leave now, I won't call the police." There were two more door slams, one far away and another quite close though he still couldn't see anyone.
"No, Wolfgang it's me." It was Kurt's voice and his friend emerged from the shadows. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of warm up pants. He looked winded, like he'd been exercising.
"What are you doing?" Wolfgang asked.
Kurt looked around the tent, still catching his breath. "I'm… Uh, I'm…" he faltered. "I'm working on a project." He said at last.
Wolfgang looked incredulous. "What kind of project? It sounds like you're doing construction in here banging around like that."
"Banging? It sounds different to me." Kurt said.
"What are you talking about? What are you doing?"
Kurt was silent, the expressions on his face changing as he seemed to undergo some kind of internal debate. Finally, he sighed, suddenly looking very nervous. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked.
Wolfgang was confused. "Sure."
"Okay. I'll show you." Kurt said. He bounced nervously on the balls of his feet for a moment and then walked a few paces away. He turned back towards Wolfgang. "Ready?" he asked.
Wolfgang shrugged, not exactly what he was ready for.
"Okay." Said Kurt. He took a deep breath and drew himself up like Wolfgang had seen him do when preparing for any kind of acrobatic maneuver. Instead of tumbling however, Kurt disappeared in a puff of dark smoke and reappeared in another puff a few feet away. His disappearance and reappearance were each accompanied by the sound Wolfgang had been hearing.
"You're doing magic?" Wolfgang asked, even more confused.
"I don't know what it is." Kurt said.
"What do you mean you don't know what it is?" Wolfgang asked.
Kurt shrugged. "I don't know. I just…" He disappeared again, reappearing very close to Wolfgang's side. The smoke had an acrid odor and Wolfgang waved it away. Suddenly it dawned on him.
"You mean you're just doing that? It's not a trick?" He asked.
"Yeah." Kurt said.
Wolfgang took a step away from Kurt. "How?" He asked, his voice sounding slightly hysterical.
"I'm not really sure." Kurt said sadly. "One day I could just do it."
Wolfgang didn't know what to say. He started to stammer a reply, stopped and then started again only to have to stop again since he still hadn't made any real words. Kurt could do a lot of amazing things, but this one took the cake. "Do it again." Wolfgang said.
Kurt did, several more times, trying to stay within the circle of light cast by the lantern.
By the time he was done, Wolfgang was grinning. "That's incredible!" He cried, "That's cooler than all the other stuff you can do put together."
"I haven't really perfected it yet." Kurt said, "But I'm getting better. I come in here and practice sometimes when everyone's asleep."
"Better? What used to happen before?" Wolfgang asked. He watched a deep purple color appear on Kurt's cheeks.
"I couldn't seem to bring my clothes with me." Kurt admitted.
Wolfgang cracked up. "Really?" He asked.
"It's not funny!' Kurt said emphatically, "I couldn't really control where I was going either. Sometimes I ended up really far away from where my clothes were. And then I couldn't get back to them."
Imagining this only made Wolfgang laugh harder. Kurt made an exasperated noise and disappeared. Wolfgang heard him reappear somewhere in the blackness across the tent from him.
From then on nearly every night, Wolfgang helped Kurt figure out his strange new ability. For an artist, Wolfgang sure seemed to think like a scientist and as far as Kurt could tell, he was determined to map out the exact limits of Kurt's new talent. Sometimes he was surprised Wolfgang wasn't standing around in a white lab coat with a clipboard checking things off.
Despite Wolfgang's adherence to the scientific method, Kurt actually found it rather helpful. Until their training sessions, Kurt wasn't sure what would happen each time he shifted. But with Wolfgang's help, he was starting to come up with some guidelines. For instance, Kurt could make lateral moves easier than vertical ones. Even so it seemed that on the vertical plane going down was easier than going up making it appear as though gravity was still at work.
Neither of them could agree on a name for it. Kurt called it "shifting" or "blinking" because that's what it felt like. Wolfgang didn't understand the "blinking" term until Kurt explained, "it's like blinking your eyes, you can see the back of your eyelids but it's so quick that you don't know what they look like." Wolfgang wanted Kurt to call it "Apparating", a term made up by J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter books, but since Kurt had never read the books, it didn't make any sense to him. They finally settled on the rather dull, yet scientific sounding "teleporting".
The project stayed secret even as their experiments were becoming more elaborate. When Wolfgang wanted to see how far away Kurt could teleport they had to sneak away from the circus to a large field where Wolfgang could find targets with a pair of binoculars and see how close to them Kurt could get. A side benefit Wolfgang's relentless experimentation was that Kurt discovered that teleporting was just like any other athletic skill; at first it had been exhausting, but with practice he was gaining endurance.
Once height and distance were mastered, Kurt started trying to carry things with him. The closer things were to his body, the easier it was for him to carry them. Besides his own clothes, he could teleport with small objects. More often than not, anything that weighed more than a few pounds stayed behind. The biggest shock was when Kurt attempted to teleport with a heavy wooden block and took only half of it with him. Wolfgang had been wondering if it would be possible for Kurt to take another person with him, but staring at the cleanly cut halves of each block, it didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.
It was quite by accident that Kurt discovered that he carried momentum when he teleported. He had been swinging on the trapeze intending to see if he could teleport to the ground. He slid across the floor at the same speed and slammed into the bleachers headfirst. Kurt, sitting up but looking slightly dazed announced that it was time to quit for the night.
They retired to Wolfgang's crowded trailer, sitting around his desk like it was a table while Wolfgang enumerated his notes. "I think you can go about a mile or two, but you can't go that far up or down. The momentum thing is interesting, we need to try that some more…"
"I think I like standing still better." Kurt interrupted, rubbing the knot on his head.
"Plus there's that weird 'bamf' sound it makes and the stinky smoke. I wish I knew how it worked." Wolfgang continued as though Kurt hadn't said anything. "It's almost like you open a door, step through it, and end up leaving through a different door in another part of the room."
"That's actually kind of what it feels like." Kurt said.
Wolfgang rubbed his chin; there was a memory on the edges of his consciousness that had to do with smoke and doors. He concentrated a moment and then there it was: the cigar room. When Wolfgang had been maybe five or six, his mother had forbid cigar smoking in all but one room of the house. That room was the "cigar room". His father had furnished it with heavy leather chairs and dark wood tables; even with the windows open it had the lingering sweet smell of tobacco. When his father had business parties the men would congregate in the cigar room after dinner and quickly fill the room with pungent smoke. Whenever anyone left or entered the room, the smoke would start to drift through the open door only to be sucked back in again when the door shut. All that would be left was a tiny puff of evidence that the door had ever been opened.
Kurt had to be doing the same thing. But where was he going? And what kind of door was he opening?
He had hardly even begun to contemplate this when another idea struck him. What if Kurt was the door? What if instead of opening a door and stepping into a room, he was the one opening and shutting? Wolfgang suddenly wished he had paid better attention in physics.
The theory of relativity said that an object in motion is only in motion from the perspective of a stationary viewer. And from the perspective of the object, it is standing still and the world moves around it. His professor had used an airplane as an example. Someone on the ground sees an airplane take off in New York and land in Los Angeles. The people on the airplane, however are not moving, they see New York leave and Los Angeles arrive. So if Kurt was the object in motion, then he entered the "cigar room" at a certain point and left it at the same point, only the world had switched positions.
Since there was only one Kurt this implied that the spot where he had once stood was now vacant so he could fill in a new spot elsewhere. That was what the smoke was, it filled up the "hole" Kurt left and was displaced out of the way when Kurt arrived. Exactly what was making the smoke, he couldn't be sure, but he was positive about the displacement. Wolfgang only had a moment to enjoy his discovery. It meant there could be horrible repercussions. He frowned.
"What are you thinking about?" Kurt asked.
Wolfgang came out of his reverie and realized that he must have been staring off into space the whole time he'd been thinking. "Have you ever tried to teleport to a place you can't see?" Wolfgang asked.
Kurt shrugged. "I don't think so…No, I haven't. Why? Do you think I should try it?"
Wolfgang held up his hands in warning. "No, no. Don't ever try it."
Kurt laughed. "Why, what's the big deal?"
Wolfgang jumped up and grabbed a clear glass, filled it to the very top with water from his jug and set it on his desk in front of Kurt. He then grabbed a stone he was using for a paperweight and held it up. "This is you." He said. "And this glass is a space where you aren't."
Kurt looked a little puzzled but nodded and Wolfgang dropped the stone in the water. Water sloshed out of the top of the glass onto the table and the stone sank to the bottom.
"The stone displaces the water."
"So."
Wolfgang gestured at the glass, "Look, some of the water came out of the glass, the water had to move out of the way so the stone could be there."
"Okay, but what does this have to do with me being able to see?" Kurt asked.
"You don't get it? Air moves out of the way, water moves out of the way, but…" Wolfgang grabbed a spoon, fished the rock out of the glass, and dropped it on the table for emphasis. "The table doesn't move out of the way to let the rock in."
"No," Kurt agreed, "the rock lands on the table."
"Yeah, but what if the rock tried to land in the table?"
Kurt scratched his head. "So you're saying I could accidentally teleport into a solid object? That I could get stuck inside it?"
"Exactly – it can't move out of the way." Wolfgang said.
Kurt considered for a moment, drawing lines on the table with the spilled water. "So, if I can't see it, I can't know that it's safe to go there." He said at last.
Wolfgang nodded. "Never go where you can't see. I don't know what would happen if you tried." He said.
Still tracing tendrils of water from the puddle around the glass, Kurt nodded solemnly. It suddenly seemed like a lot of responsibility and not for the first time he found himself wondering exactly what God had in mind for him.
It was weeks before Wolfgang began to rethink the idea of Kurt transporting another person with him. Kurt was getting really good at it. His "re-materializations" for lack of a better word, always his weak point, were more and more precise and he had built enough stamina to move fairly heavy objects intact. It had been over a week since he'd arrived without a complete item. The limit seemed to be around 200 pounds, but that was more than enough leeway for someone Wolfgang's size.
Wolfgang wasn't even sure why he was so obsessed with the idea. For one thing, it was dangerous. Neither he nor Kurt knew exactly how Kurt was doing it. What if there was something about Kurt that shielded him from whatever force it was moving him through space? Would it apply to a passenger? There were so many unknowns and yet, since the very first night he'd seen Kurt teleport, he'd wanted to try it.
Maybe it was that he'd known Kurt for nearly a year now, but in so many ways his friend remained a mystery to him. There were so many things about Kurt that Wolfgang could never know, could never understand. So often he was struck by the impossible limitations Kurt's appearance placed on him only to be equally shocked by the ease with which Kurt accepted them. Maybe it was empathy Wolfgang was looking for, to just for one moment look at the world from behind yellow eyes and blue skin and understand why Kurt didn't hate everybody.
Then again Wolfgang wondered if it wasn't empathy but jealousy. Despite his outward appearance and charm Wolfgang was fairly unremarkable by his family's standards. He knew he was handsome, but so were his brothers and his cousins, just as their fathers were. He knew he was intelligent as well, but once again this was nothing unusual in a family whose scholarship went back for generations. He had money of course, but he had earned none of it.
All his life Wolfgang had fought against the stifling forces of his father and his family's business interests; forces that had been threatening to suck dry since he was a child. He had spent his life running away from it. When he compared himself to Kurt, who had every conceivable disadvantage and yet managed to shine anyway, Wolfgang felt wholly inadequate.
But Kurt had chosen to share his secret with him alone and Wolfgang wanted to be more than a facilitator, he wanted to be a part of it. But that meant he needed a test subject.
Kurt looked somewhat confused when Wolfgang handed him a small cage containing a hen he'd bought at a street market in town, but agreed to teleport with it. The chicken arrived, with Kurt, alive and intact if not somewhat dazed. They opened the cage and after a few minutes the hen hopped out and began pecking at the floor speculatively, apparently unaffected by the trip.
The next evening, after their chicken test pilot had been donated to the safety of a nearby farmer's coop, Wolfgang waited rather pensively for his turn. Kurt was standing a few feet away from him, head bowed and eyes closed mumbling under his breath.
"Are you praying?" Wolfgang asked.
Kurt opened his eyes and glanced up at him. "Yeah."
"You're not nervous are you?"
Kurt straightened up. "A little," he admitted. "You?"
"Not until you started praying. It will be fine. The chicken was okay." Wolfgang said, trying not to let his own nerves show.
"You're a lot bigger. And I wasn't friends with the chicken."
"I trust you. You can do it." Wolfgang said. "I'm ready when you are," he added encouragingly.
Kurt took a step forward and pulled Wolfgang into a tight embrace. Wolfgang put his arms around Kurt and shut his eyes, not sure what to expect. After a few moments nothing happened. He opened his eyes.
"Kurt?"
"Sorry. I'm still nervous," came the reply from somewhere near Wolfgang's right ear.
"People are going to get the wrong idea about us." Wolfgang said, trying to lighten the mood.
Kurt gave an anxious laugh. "Okay," he said, "ready?"
Wolfgang nodded his head and swallowed hard, concentrating on the far wall of the tent. There was a crack like a gunshot and suddenly he was falling backwards, the world around him spinning. He let go of Kurt and was vaguely aware of Kurt doing the same to him. Wolfgang lay on the ground feeling more nauseous than he had in his life willing the world to stop spinning. Did this happen every time? He wondered how Kurt could stand it.
Wolfgang didn't know how long he lay on the floor, his hands pressed to his temples with his fingers over his eyes. There was movement beside him and Wolfgang pulled his hands away to see Kurt crawling over to him from where he'd fallen, his face was a mask of concern.
"Are you okay?" He asked.
Wolfgang nodded; his head was starting to clear, the nausea fading. Kurt was half sitting half lying next to him, leaning on one elbow, his whole body shaking. As Wolfgang sat up Kurt slid the rest of the way to the floor and lay on his side with his eyes closed, still trembling.
"Are you okay?" Wolfgang asked him. He felt almost normal now, but Kurt obviously didn't.
"I've never been so tired." Kurt said without opening his eyes.
Wolfgang looked at Kurt and suddenly felt like a jackass. This whole time he'd been so worried about what would happen to him, that it hadn't even occurred to him to think about how Kurt might be affected. And now that he had the answer it made him feel selfish and stupid. The weight of guilt made him feel worse than Kurt looked.
He had to get Kurt off the floor and since Kurt didn't look like he was going to get up anytime soon, Wolfgang grabbed him by the armpits and pulled him into a sitting position.
"Can you stand?" He asked, still keeping a hold so Kurt didn't slide back down to the floor. Kurt nodded feebly and Wolfgang hauled him to his feet. He couldn't stand or walk on his own so Wolfgang half dragged half carried him out of the tent. He took Kurt to his own trailer. Margali's was twice the distance and Wolfgang wasn't sure how he would get him into his top bunk anyway.
Inside Wolfgang dropped Kurt onto his bed where sat swaying with his head down and his eyes still shut. Wolfgang wasn't sure what to do. There was obviously something wrong, but he had no idea what it was or how to fix it. He poured a glass of water, but Kurt couldn't even hold onto it. Wolfgang held it for him so Kurt could drink it.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Wolfgang asked. He knew Kurt found teleporting tiring, but he never got like this when he teleported alone.
Kurt nodded, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. "I already feel better. I just need to rest that's all." He said.
Wolfgang realized that Kurt was right. He still looked exhausted, but he had stopped shaking and was holding his head up higher.
"So much for our big experiment." Wolfgang said.
"It was a lot harder than I thought it would be." Kurt admitted.
"You can stay here tonight."
"Mmm," Kurt was already stretching out on Wolfgang's bed. He was asleep before Wolfgang could pull the covers over him.
Wolfgang watched him sleeping for a moment, reassuring himself that yes, Kurt was breathing and everything was going to be all right. Once assured, he opened a cupboard below the bed to retrieve the sleeping bag he used on cold nights. Wolfgang spread it out on the floor and curled up on top of it. Something poked him in the head and he realized that Kurt twitched his tail in his sleep and it was hanging off the edge of the bed. He laughed and pushed it away realizing he was probably the only guy in the world to ever have this problem.
He lay awake staring at the ceiling for a long time, thinking about the evening's events. Remembering Kurt lying unable to move on the tent floor, Wolfgang vowed never to ask him to teleport with another person again.
